Home Up One Level What's New? Q & A Short Essays Holocaust Denial Guest Book Donations Multimedia Links

The Holocaust History Project.
The Holocaust History Project.

FRENCH CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST

A memorial
Serge Klarsfeld  

 
Previous Page Back  Contents  Contents Page 382 Home Page Home Page  Forward Next Page 
     
[separa…] tions between parents and children will be carried out."

The separations did take place; the only children with parents were some young girls who followed their fathers. Of the 110 children under 18, 37 were boys. They were chosen because of their foreign birth; only one was French born. As with convoy 13, about 20 percent came from Warsaw.

Convoy 15, August 5, 1942 (Beaune-la Rolande) Like the preceding two, this convoy was com posed of parents and their adolescent children. Their younger children were held at the camps while Berlin decided how they were to be deported. They would not have to wait long: their turn for deportation would come in less than two weeks. Convoy 15 had 221 deportees under age 18, most foreign born. (Twenty-five were born in Paris, compared to over 40 in Warsaw.) A majority – 119-were female. Most had been living in Paris or its suburbs. The average age dropped considerably compared with the earlier convoys, with fewer older children and more younger ones. Only 11 deportees were born in 1924 or 1925, while 38 were born in 1929, 7 in 1930, 4 in 1931, and 2 in 1933 – these last 2 less than 10 years old.

Convoy 16, August 7, 1942 (Pithiviers) Convoy 16 was the last of the four convoys made up mainly of adult Jews taken in the Vel d'Hiv roundups in Paris. Of a total of 1,069, 643 had spent the intervening weeks interned in the Pithiviers camp, and 426 in Beaune-la-Rolande. Many were parents deported with their children. There were 315 children under 18, just over half (162) girls. As in convoy 15, the average age of the children continued to drop: the majority were born in 1927 and 1928, 67 were born in 1929, 11 in 1930, and 1 in 1931. At the same time, the Gestapo in Orléans prevented more than 150 boys between the ages of 12 and 14 (born between 1928 and 1930) from being included in the convoy because it did not yet have authorization from Berlin for large shipments of children.

Convoy 17, August 10, 1942 (Drancy) Convoy 17 was made up almost exclusively of German Jews, many older than 50. They had been held at Gurs, in southwestern France, in a camp in the Unoccupied Zone. Only three of the deportees were under 18.

Convoy 18, August 12, 1942 (Drancy) Convoy 18 deported mainly Germans and Austrians who had been held in a number of camps in the Unoccupied Zone: Gurs (600); Noé (161); Récébédou (173); and Le Vernet (88). The only child was 17 years old.

Convoy 19, August 14, 1942 (Drancy) Convoy 19, like the two preceding convoys, was made up of many internees from camps the Unoccupied Zone. Three-quarters came from Les Milles (236); Récébédou (63); Noé (56); and Rivesaltes (395). Only 2 of the 117 adolescents came from these component groups; the rest were part of a group of 223 people added at Drancy. This latter group was mainly from Parisian families arrested after July 17. Of the 117 youths, equally divided by sex (60 girls; 57 boys), 72 were born in France. The telex from the Paris Gestapo to Eichmann in Berlin and to Auschwitz notes that for the
    
   

FRENCH CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST

A memorial
Serge Klarsfeld

 
Previous Page  Back Page 382 Forward  Next Page

   

Last modified: March 9, 2008
Technical/administrative contact: webmaster@holocaust-history.org